Made For You

Ch. 12: Between Graves

Sofia

If the dead could talk, Dante would be disappointed in me.

He would be embarrassed with how I haven't been able to move on. Not after some months, not after a year.

His grave is pristinely clean, unlike the others around the Church's cemetery. There in plain, bold letters, they have engraved the name 'DANTE SALVATORE - Dearest Son & Friend'. They don't justify what he was to me. He was more than a friend—he was my love. His parents didn't think that title would be apt to put on their son's grave. They wanted to erase me from his life, even after death.

With a blanket and book, I have laid myself on the ground every Sunday (the day he died) just like today, reading him the latest release although he knew how much I hated reading. He loved it. Books were his lifeline and now they are mine too. I find an escape in the words. I imagine Dante loving them and fall in love too.

The sky has cracked open on me, drenching me with a sudden shower but nothing can move my eyes from the final page of the romance novel I brought with me today. It was a daring decision to escape my prison. Yet, I managed to do it.

I am proud of myself. Fuck the consequences!

The story ends with Satan returning from the pits of hell as the heroine is about to marry the hero. He drags her with him to his never-ending misery.

"Blasphemous!" I slam the book shut, irritated by the ending. I was so invested in the story and the couple. Did it really have to end that way?

Still under the pouring rain, I let the book soak and be destroyed by how much I hated it. I glance at Dante's grave as the earthy smell when the droplets hit the ground engulfs me in a cold hug. I am wearing a short A-line dress which doesn't protect me from this weather.

To be frank, the weather woman was incredibly wrong about the 'sunny skies all day' shit.

"Tell you what," I start, my tone irritated. "I never got the hype with Mercedes Waters. What's so great about her writing? It's crappy literature."

I imagine the conversation unfolding with Dante. If he were here, he would have replied with: 'You don't get to hate my favorite author, Bianchi. She is pretty authentic'.

The realization that he would never say those words to me pinches my heart, making my throat hurt as tears form in my eyes. I chuckle, slamming a hand on my forehead as that chuckle turns to a soft wail.

"God! I'm so dumb..." I muse. "I'm here reading a book in this pouring rain, talking to your grave, thinking that you can still hear me. Can you? Who am I kidding? Even if you did, you surely wouldn't talk to me."

The rain starts picking up speed, climbing to a ferocious wrath which makes the trees sway.

"Have you forgiven me yet?" My chest contracts as I continue to speak to the lonely grave. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gotten close to you, shouldn't have fallen in love with you, shouldn't have begged you to take me with you." The tears mix with the raindrops as they escape my eyes. My tongue sucks in the drops as my lips stay parted. "I'm the reason you're gone."

I swallow the raindrops, my words giving way to sobs as I look down at my hands, replaying the moment in my head when I had grasped his arm that night, pleading with him not to go. He went because that's what they wanted.

He never returned to me.

"I keep trying—to forgive myself. I...I can't. All I see is your face and the last time I saw it. It keeps coming back to me. I wish I had stopped you that night. I wish I had done something. You'd have been alive. I'm sorry, Dante."